


just don't lie to me

by esteemed_professor



Series: Nikole Shepard [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Mass Effect 1, Past Relationship(s), Shepard is bad at feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 20:56:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7656433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteemed_professor/pseuds/esteemed_professor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone's a little in love with Commander Shepard; some more so than others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just don't lie to me

**Author's Note:**

> eheh, i feel guilty for putting this in the Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard ship tag because honestly the whole point of this drabble is to give some insight as to why shepard and kaidan never worked out their issues post-me1. sorry, kaidan, but you'll never be garrus vakarian.

Later -- years later, when the Reaper threat is finally eliminated, but before then, too -- people will ask Kaidan what it was like, working under the auspicious Commander Shepard, trying his damndest to keep pace with her as she shoots through the galaxy like a blazing supernova. He will give them answers shaped by his most recent interactions with her, but will always be painfully aware that once, those same questions would have elicited a very different tone of reverence from him. 

It’s hard not to get caught up in the gravitational pull of Shepard’s personality. Despite all of his efforts to maintain the strict professionalism that Alliance protocol dictates should exist between a soldier and his CO, Kaidan finds himself anticipating their conversations between missions with a sort of boyish glee that is most certainly  _ not  _ appropriate for the current command situation. It’s only slightly comforting that everyone else aboard the  _ Normandy  _ seems to be suffering a similar plight.

He’ll never understand how she manages to cow a krogan into submission with unspoken threats in one breath, and reassure a frightened victim with unparalleled gentleness in the next. He half suspects that this tactic is how she manages to get her way so often; her would-be opponents never really know what to expect, and are inevitably thrown off-balance by the strange dichotomy that is Shepard herself. The other half of him knows that she is, in essence, just really good at dealing with people. She knows when to push and when to offer aid, when to shove her way forward and when to pull back. 

Maybe that’s why he falls so hard for her when he realizes that she is utterly clueless in any sort of interpersonal situation. When they’re in the field, she conducts herself with such conviction that it never even crosses his mind to second-guess her decisions. And yet, when he brings up the topic of his family, she seems as lost and out of her element as if he were trying to explain quantum physics. It’s endearing, really, to see her flounder so when the layers making up “Commander Shepard” are peeled away. More than that, though, it makes her irrevocably  _ human _ , even for all of her super-human feats of wonder. 

He probably should have seen it coming when she put herself in danger to save him during their very first mission on Eden Prime. He definitely should have noticed something was up when his heart rate increased every time she picked him to accompany her on a mission (which is to say,  _ every  _ time she went on a mission; there was nary a day when him and Garrus didn’t have her six). But he doesn’t know, not  _ really _ , not with bone-deep certainty, until Virmire.

  


_ It’s finally quiet. The gunfire has died, abruptly, and though he can’t see, slouched as he is over the jury-rigged bomb that’s about to send this whole facility up in smoke, what’s happening, he knows for sure that they’re going to leave him now. They’ll go get Williams, and have no more time, and then the bomb will go off, and he will die. The thought doesn’t bother him nearly as much as it should. _

_ He’s confused, then, when he’s suddenly being hauled to his feet, then slung over someone’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. _

_ “We’re coming for you, too, Ash,” growls Shepard’s voice in his ear, and he realizes suddenly who said shoulder belongs to. The green water beneath them gives way to the metal interior of the  _ Normandy’s  _ hull. _

_ “Negative, Skipper,” replies Williams over the comm, her words punctuated by the sounds of combat. “We both know that’s not gonna happen.” _

_ Unconsciousness is beginning to creep up on Kaidan as he struggles uselessly against Shepard’s iron hold. He tries to say something, to protest this choice, to deny the fact that she has very obviously chosen him over Ashley, but all that comes out is a muffled groan. _

_ “Don’t you fucking do this to me, Williams,” says Shepard, and he can hear the emotion fraying at the edges of her voice, can feel her desperation in her harsh breathing. The shuttle bay is closing, and the only response over the comm is the staccato of gunfire, followed by static. “Williams? Ashley?! Ash!”  _

_ He’s losing his battle against the darkness trying to pull him under, and Kaidan’s last few moments of awareness are filled with Shepard’s violent cursing. _

  


Kaidan knows, after that, that he’s in deep. His subsequent attempts at remaining aloof are met with abysmal failure, and somehow, for some reason, Shepard does nothing to stop his (albeit hesitant) advances. It ends with him mysteriously finding the nerve to go to her cabin the night before Ilos, and though she’s the one who asks him to stay, he can’t pretend that he wasn’t hoping for a similar outcome. With the end so near, fraternization charges feel like the least of his worries.

Only then Ilos isn’t the end. They survive, somehow,  _ impossibly _ , and live to fight another day.

But Shepard doesn’t look for him after the celebration following the Battle of the Citadel.

Shepard doesn’t seek him out before disappearing on shore leave, apparently headed to Earth --  _ alone  _ \-- to ‘sort some things out’. 

And when the  _ Normandy  _ is burning all around them and Kaidan refuses to leave her to share her ship’s fate, Shepard doesn’t turn back, not even when she barks, “that was  _ goddamn  _ order, Alenko!” and disappears into the chaos.

The next time he sees her, years later, on Horizon, flying Cerberus colors, it feels like a betrayal.

But then again, he reasons, maybe he never really knew her in the first place.

**Author's Note:**

> i love hearing what others think i can improve on in my writing, but please be gentle. my ego is so fragile.
> 
> title is from "I'm Not Calling You a Liar" by Florence + The Machine (hint: i really like florence. i make a lot of references to her music in my writing. you have been warned):
> 
> I’m not calling you a liar  
> Just don’t lie to me  
> I’m not calling you a thief  
> Just don’t steal from me  
> I’m not calling you a ghost  
> Just stop haunting me  
> And i love you so much  
> I’m gonna let you kill me


End file.
